Sony Ericsson Xperia arc Review

Introduction:

It's no secret that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 was somewhat of a letdown considering it was pegged as the mobile giant's multimedia powerhouse. On paper, it looked great, but the reality was the likes of HTC's Sense UI made Sony Ericsson's Android skin feel more like a beta than a final release. The Sony Ericsson Xperia arc therefore represents a reboot - curvaceously sexy, endowed with a new screen technology and a revised UI, Sony Ericsson hopes it can mend some perceptions the X10 created- and from the offset, the odds are already looking more favourable for Sony Ericsson's new flagship.

Design:

We said it in our introduction - this is a sexy phone. At just 8.7mm in the middle, which gradually becomes 10mm at both ends, it feels waif-like in the hand in the best way possible. Without fail, everybody who held this phone commented on the slickness of design. The arched profile makes it more comfortable to hold and handle and lends to offset the bulk the 4.2” display could potentially lumber the handset with.



You can compare the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The screen is a Super LCD, with 480x854 pixels measuring in at 4.2". In turn, while the resolution isn't going to set the Sony Ericsson arc apart, the fact that it's graced with Sony's BRAVIA engine that the company uses in its award-winning flat screen TVs does. We can attest that there is a difference as photo and video playback is truly bright and vivid, though we nevertheless prefer Super AMOLED, as it enables these vibrant colors anywhere throughout the interface. The display is comfortable to use in the bright outdoors which is great, though viewing angles aren't what we'd hope from a premium screen. Nevertheless, when looked at head-on, the screen delivers a distinctly premium viewing experience.

Under the screen are three thin Android navigational buttons – back, home and menu. They are reminiscent of what we have on the other phones in the Xperia line, and are illuminated, however, their icons aren't, which is somewhat unintuitive. The three keys have a nice rubbery feeling to them when pressed and are very easy to operate.


The Sony Ericsson Xperia arc comes in a “Midnight Blue” and “Misty Silver” version, both of which look stunning. The whole design is made of quality plastic which keeps the weight down, so while not as robust as aluminum unibody handsets for example, the thinness and lightness endows the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc with a huge amount of appeal.


The camera sensor is placed in  the upper edge on the back - which means you have to be careful not to place your finger over the lens when shooting. Combine that with the rather smallish and somewhat hard to press shutter key on the right near the lower edge, and you definitely need to hold the phone with two hands when taking a picture, unless you use the touchscreen. In addition, there is no front facing camera, which leaves video calls out of the equation.


The other design element that classes up the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc is the chromed band surrounding it, which encompasses all the rest of the buttons and openings – the volume rocker and microUSB port up right, the 3.5mm audio jack up left, as well as the cover of the microHDMI port and the power/lock button at the very top - which is unfortunately small and takes some getting used to.

Interface and Functionality:

With the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc, Sony Ericsson has changed the way its custom UI interacts with Android by only including the Timescape element, and mentioned updates will now be swifter because of these changes. The feature that has gone away is Mediascape, although it is present in a stripped down version called simply Media, which according to Sony Ericsson is a “customizable widget based media pane”, but looks more of a glorified shortcut to us now, than anything else.


Not that Sony Ericsson will need to update its arching handset soon, considering it runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but it's nice to hear we might be covered this time. Gingerbread doesn't bring many visible changes to the interface, most of the changelog is under the hood, but still, the ability to copy/paste or move the cursor with the large handles now, as well as the improved multitasking and process management, are welcome additions.

Moreover, the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc has the same second generation Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset that is in the HTC Desire HD, and the T-Mobile myTouch 4G and carries the powerful Adreno 205 graphics chip making it one of the fastest handsets this side of dual-core. We did notice some stuttering every now and then, and slow-down with the custom widgets, however nothing drastic.

The Timescape function is the biggest customization left. It is a card-based system for showing your messaging and social networking updates, flippable up and down with ease, though it's little more than eye candy. Social networking is present in the phonebook, but loosely integrated, and you are redirected to the dedicated apps if you want to lookup your contacts' Facebook  or Twitter profiles from the phonebook.


One of the fancier functions in the interface is the Overview mode – pinch the homescreen to zoom away, and all your current widgets gather on one homescreen, so you don't even have to swipe left or right between homescreens to find what you need - a nice touch, reminiscing the helicopter view in HTC Sense, with the offer of some original functionality.



Internet, Connectivity and Software:

The stock Android 2.3 browser is an excellent mobile solution for accessing the Internets, and it makes no exception in the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc. Due to the speedy chipset, zooming, scrolling, panning around and multitouch work flawlessly. Flash content, including videos, displays very well, and the whole mobile internet experience is great.


The Sony Ericsson Xperia arc has all the connectivity options other than 4G – 7.2Mbps HSDPA, Wi-Fi,Bluetooth , A-GPS, FM radio with RDS, and DLNA for media streaming. The DLNA function has its own app called Media Server, or you can also use the microHDMI port to stream movies from the handset to your big screen TV which we tested and works great.

A new twist is the LiveWare app – it allows you to start an application of your choosing when something is connected to the phone, be it a headset, headphones or a charger. Thus you can start the music or video player each time headphones are connected, or automatically go into the desktop clock mode in Android, while the handset is charging.

Camera and Multimedia:

The 8MP camera on the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc is with the new Exmor R sensor. It is back-illuminated, like the one on the iPhone 4. This feature, combined with a novel arrangement of the photo diodes, tailored to the fine pixel structure, should bring high sensitivity and less noise in low-light situations. Its 1/3.2" size is a far cry from the 1/1.83” on the Nokia N8, but the pictures are still very good.

The color representation is extremely accurate, detail is plenty, and the only issue we saw is a tad harsh noise suppression, which slightly smeared the details when light was scarce. The low-light snaps came out above average, probably thanks to the back-illuminated sensor, and the yellowish hue that we observed in all indoor photos with the iPhone 4 was present here only in one of four snaps. The LED flash is no Xenon, but does the job up to about ten feet, without casting weird shadows on the objects.

It also does a good job illuminating night video scenes, especially in Night Scene mode. Video is smooth at 30 fps, and the same good looking colors and fine detail are observed as in the stills.

Sony Ericsson Xperia arc Sample Video 1:



Sony Ericsson Xperia arc Sample Video 2:



The camera interface is touch-friendly and intuitive. There are six focusing modes – single autofocus, multi autofocus, macro, face detection, infinity and touch focus. Center, spot and average metering modes are covered as well, and for manual white balance setup incandescent, fluorescent, daylight and cloudy options are available. There are also an image stabilizer mode and four flash modes – auto, fill flash, no flash, and red eye reduction. The extensive capabilities of the 8MP shooter are rounded up with a bunch of scene modes such as Landscape, Portrait, Night Portrait, Sports, Beach and Snow, Night Scene, Party and Document. The smile detection algorithm can even be set to track a faint or a big smile.


Obviously a lot of Sony’s Cybershot expertise has gone into the camera interface, but a notable exception is the lack of any effects on the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc. No Negative or Sepia, nothing, which is puzzling, considering the wide range of other capabilities. There is a vertical strip with the latest pictures and videos captured on the right, and you can pull it left to reveal the rest in thumbnail view, which resembles the concept in WP7.

The music player is the same as in the other iterations of this UI, with flashy, but minimalistic interface, ten equalizers, the song recognition service Track ID, and the option to show related YouTube videos. The loudspeaker is outstanding. Strong, with deep base sounds and very clean and pure output, even at the highest volume.


The video player and the gallery are stock Android and the handset doesn’t support DivX/Xvid, so we had to download a free player from Android Market to watch our ripped TV shows with subtitles. The Mobile BRAVIA Engine can be turned on and off manually from the Display settings, but we can’t imagine a reason for it to be off, as it adds color and sharpness to the pictures and videos on the handset.

Performance:

The in-call performance of the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc was pretty good. The earpiece is punchy, and produces no audible voice distortion, even at the highest volume. The phone has dual mics for noise suppression, so the other party said they could hear us distinctively with no background noise, despite us being in the street. The loudspeaker performed well here as well, and thus the phone can be used successfully for impromptu teleconferencing.

The 1500mAh battery is rated for 7 hours of talk time in 3G mode, which is slightly above average for a high-end Android phone with a large screen. We can only vouch that the handset got us through the day with our moderate review usage, and left us with a few hours of battery life just in case.

Conclusion:

Wrapping up our review of the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc we have to say that the company seems to have nailed it this time. The thin arched profile makes you forget that you are holding a gadget with a huge 4.2” screen. On top of that it is very light thanks to its plastic build, and the tasteful design and chromed rim remains sleek and classy. We're extremely thankful that the company has endowed the handset with Gingerbread and simplified its Android skinning efforts, since this improves usability and should speed up the eventual OS updates.

Add a great 8MP camera, loudspeaker and screen to the mix and we can safely say that the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc is a solid contender for 2011. Sure we find HTC Sense a more refined UI, and the single-core phone isn't as future-proof as dual core models, but this is one of the sexiest phones we've seen this year and brings all its features together with style and finesse. If you want a dual core alternative with less focus on style, check out the Atrix 4G. Alternatively, the HTC HD7 would provide a similarly-classed Windows Phone 7, while the iPhone 4 is your iOS option, though it has a considerably smaller screen.

Software version of the reviewed unit: Android 2.3; Build Number 3.0.A.2.181

Sony Ericsson Xperia arc Video Review: